CARNACKI: The New Adventures Read online

  “‘The grip on my mind grew stronger.

  “‘I saw vast plains of snow and ice where black things slumped amid tumbled ruins of long dead cities. My head swam, and the walls of the hold melted and ran. The firebrand in my hand seemed to recede into a great distance until it was little more than a pinpoint of light in a blanket of darkness, and I was alone, in a vast cathedral of emptiness.

  “‘A tide took me, a swell that lifted and transported me, faster than thought, to the green twilight of ocean depths far distant.

  “‘I realised I was not alone. We floated, mere shadows now, scores—nay, tens of scores of us—in that cold silent sea. I was aware that other sailors were nearby, but I had no thought for anything but the rhythm, the dance. Far below us, Cyclopean ruins shone dimly in a luminescent haze. Columns and rock faces tumbled in a non-Euclidean geometry that confused the eye and brooked no close inspection. And something deep in those ruins knew we were there.

  “‘And while our slumbering god dreamed, we danced for him, there in the twilight, danced to the rhythm.

  “‘We were at peace.

  “‘A flaring pain jolted me back to sanity. I smelled burning hair, but took several seconds to note that it was my own hand that had been seared. The coxswain had broken the hold on me by touching his firebrand to my skin.

  “‘I had no time to thank him, for the beast had encroached closer to me while I dreamed, and even now threatened to engulf me.

  “‘Once again I held the firebrand ahead of me, and with the aid of the coxswain I held the beast at bay, struggling to keep its grip from settling on my mind. Indeed, if the barrel of pitch had not been brought, I might have succumbed.

  “‘Burning the pitch enabled the recapture of the beast to proceed more rapidly. The heat from the flames threatened to set fire to the deck of the hold itself, but I refused to allow the men to put it out until we had driven the beast back into the casket.

  “‘I have ensured that the box is sealed completely, and as you have seen it is now stored at the furthermost end of the hold. All I could do was keep the crew as far away from it as is possible on this small vessel,

  “‘That, and hope that in our dreams we do not fall again under its spell.

  “‘But it is hard. For every time I close my eyes I dream, of vast empty seas, of deep black waters where there is nothing but endless dark, endless quiet. And while my slumbering god dreams, I dance for him, there in the twilight, dance to the rhythm. In my dreams I am at peace.

  “‘It is seductive.’

  *

  “It took me several seconds to realise that his tale, at least as much as he desired to tell to me, was finished.

  “‘Beast?’ I asked. ‘You mean there is a physical presence? Something alive inside the box?’

  “Gault laughed, but there was little of any humour in it.

  “‘Aye, and I’m a Chinaman if I tell a lie. There’s a beast all right. And a savage one at that.’

  “Another thought struck me.

  “‘So why do you not just have your British Museum chaps come and haul the thing away?’

  “His grin broadened.

  “‘Well, there’s two good reasons,’ he replied. ‘The first is that anyone who touches the bloody thing is instantly under its spell.’

  “‘The other?’ I asked, but I already knew the answer, having read it in his face.

  “‘I haven’t exactly informed anyone at the Museum of the box’s existence as yet,’ he said, and laughed. ‘I was hoping to take them by surprise, as it were.’

  “His grin was so infectious that I had to laugh with him.

  “‘I take it then that the goods are of, shall we say, dubious provenance?’

  “‘You can say anything you like, Mr. Carnacki,’ he replied and poured me another rum. ‘Just get rid of whatever haunts that box and you shall share in whatever profit it makes me on its sale.’

  *

  “By this time it was well after ten in the evening. I would have been content to leave matters to the following day, but Gault was insistent; pleading even.

  “‘I wasn’t lying about the imminent threat of poverty,’ he said over another of his fine cheroots. ‘In my business there are only the thinnest of margins between prosperity and the gutter, and I am in danger of falling on the wrong side.’

  “‘I will need my protections,’ I protested, but he waved that away.

  “‘We can send my man back to Chelsea for whatever you need. I can vouch for his honesty, and will do so with my life . . . or his, whichever is the most convenient.’

  “I was growing to enjoy this straight-talking seafarer’s company, and allowed him to call for his man from the carriage. We gave him his instructions, which were simple enough. ‘Pick up the long wooden box in my library and bring it to the boat,’ was the gist of what I had to say as I handed over my keys. Gault added some admonitions against straying from that course, and I heard grit and truth in his voice when he spoke of the punishment for transgression. I would not like to be the seaman to fall under this captain’s brand of defaulter’s code.

  “After his man departed Gault seemed somewhat more at ease, now that he had my word that I would help him. We chatted for several hours while sipping his rum. I refused a top up several times, realising the need to keep my wits about me, but the captain had no such qualms. By midnight the better part of a bottle had gone down his gullet. He seemed none the worse for it and started to quiz me on any theories I might have on the nature of the thing in the hold.

  “I replied with a question of my own.

  “‘You said a name, back in Chelsea,’ I said. ‘Oannes. What makes you think the box is Babylonian?’

  “I knew as soon as I spoke that it had been a mistake to utter that name so close to the thing. My own voice seemed to echo back at me—taking on depth, resonating and vibrating, as if the hull itself had become one gigantic tuning fork.

  “Gault merely smiled thinly.

  “‘It has taken to doing that rather too frequently for my liking.’ He took another hefty dose of rum and a long draw on his smoke before continuing. ‘But to answer your question . . . I only know what I was told when we loaded it. I was given that name, told it is ancient, from somewhere out of the old Persian Empire. And I want it off my boat.’

  “‘I can add something to that,’ I replied. ‘But it will only be conjecture at this point. Oan—’ I started, then quailed, remembering what had happened on saying the thing’s name. ‘The fish god, I should say, was known as a kind of go-between, like the Greek Hermes, a messenger bringing news and enlightenment from the gods.’

  “Gault let out a sarcastic grunt.

  “‘I am not saying that I believe,’ I continued. ‘And chimeras such as . . . the fish god . . . are often just attempts by primitive cultures to describe something completely out of their experience by giving it a form they can recognise. The Outer Darkness has many facets, and not all of them can be comprehended by the uninitiated.’

  “‘Outer Darkness?’ Gault asked.

  “I will not bore you chaps here tonight with the details; I have explained the cosmology to you often enough. Suffice to say it was necessary to give Gault a lesson on the great beyond. It took some time, and afterwards he was silent for a while, then nodded his head.

  “‘Your Outer Darkness sounds remarkably like what we experience when we get too close to that box, does it not?’

  “I was starting to become afraid that he was all too close to the truth.

  “The carriage returned in the early hours of the morning. Gault asked if I was ready to start, and I assented. I knew I would get no sleep until I had banished the memory of the reverberating echo. And in truth, I was somewhat excited, eager to return to the hold armed with my defences and ready to penetrate the secrets that might be revealed by the thing in the box. I lifted the box containing my protections from where Gault’s man had left it by the door and went down into the darkness of the hold.

>   “Gault led me down, carrying a lantern to show me the way, but he stayed back as I prepared the defensive circles.

  “I started by drawing a circle of chalk, taking care never to smudge the line as I navigated my way around the hold. Beyond this I rubbed a broken garlic clove in a second circle around the first.

  “When this was done, I took a small jar of water that had been blessed by a priest and went round the circle again just inside the line of chalk, leaving a wet trail that dried quickly behind me. Within this inner circle I made my pentacle using the signs of the Saaamaaa Ritual, and joined each Sign most carefully to the edges of the lines I had already made.

  “In the points of the pentacle I placed five portions of bread wrapped in linen, and in the valleys five small bottles of the holy water. Now I had my first protective barrier and with this first stage complete the hold, now protected as it was by the most basic of spells, already felt more secure.

  “I have told you chaps enough tales by now for you to know what I did next. I will not bore you with my reasons for utilising the increased protection provided by my electric pentacle, for you know that it has saved me many times already, and proves most efficacious against even the most cunning of apparitions. I set the mechanism to overlay the drawn pentacle upon the floor. When I connected up the battery, an azure glare shone from the intertwining vacuum tubes, sending dancing shadows along the length of the boat.

  “I was ready to begin.

  *

  “‘You can go back up top, or join me in the circle,’ I said to Gault. ‘I would not recommend standing outside my defences here in the hold.’

  “At first I thought he might simply ignore me, but after a moment’s reflection he stepped over the protections and into the circle at my side.

  “‘They say strange things happen at sea,’ he said with a grin. ‘But I’ve seen nowt stranger than this in many a year.’

  “I did not have the heart to tell him that this might only be the beginning of a great deal of strangeness yet to come. I waited while he lit up a cheroot and I got a pipe going, then we got to it.

  “I started with an experiment of sorts. I spoke the name again. Just once.

  “‘Oannes.’

  “The air thickened immediately, and the valves of the pentacle flared, dimmed, then flared again even brighter. The lamp flickered, as if a stiff breeze passed across it, although the air in the hold was completely still and stuffy. Shadows danced and capered across the stone chest, giving the carvings there the impression of swirling movement. And I felt it again—the tug in my mind, the call to the dance in the deeps.

  “My defences held; I had no compulsion to answer that call, and was able to watch, almost rationally, as black ooze seeped from the bottom corner of the box and spilled across the planks of the hold floor.

  “Stout chap though he was, Gault gasped and took an involuntary step backward. I only just stopped him from stepping on the lines denoting the innermost circle.

  “‘Don’t move, old man,’ I said, even as the black ooze spread in a fan towards us. ‘If you break the circle now, we might both be dead . . . or worse . . . in seconds.’

  “He nodded and pulled himself together, although I saw fresh doubt in his eyes as the ooze came within inches of our protection. The pentacle’s valves flared, lighting the whole length of the hull. I heard the sound of waves crashing on some distant shore, a noise that was taken up and amplified, crashing and echoing around us, filling the hold with all the operatic fury of an open sea gale.

  “I called to mind a Babylonian binding ritual. As ever, I knew it was the rhythm of the thing rather than the words themselves that were of import. As I chanted, the valves flared and dimmed in time.

  “‘The priest of EA am I, The priest of Damkina am I.

  The messenger of Marduk am I, My spell is the spell of EA.

  By the magic of the word of EA, And Marduk, son of Eridu,

  Let the Incarnation of Oannes of the Deeps never be unloosed.’”

  Of course you all know from our association over the years that I don’t hold with the notion of gods or demons. I know for a fact that all are just manifestations of denizens of the Outer Dark. Our less enlightened forebears knew no such thing . . . but they did know the efficacy of the correct sequence of sounds. And that was what I was banking on now. The chant was old, once of the oldest ever inscribed by the hand of man.

  “And it seemed to work—at first. The ooze stopped its spread, even retreated somewhat in the face of my chanting. But as I brought the verse to an end, the blackness crept forward and the roar of the sea began to assert itself once more. The tug in my mind, the call to the dance, got stronger, more insistent.

  “‘Follow my lead,’ I said to Gault, and launched into the chant again, putting more into it this time, raising my voice to a shout. The first time round I was on my own, and although I once again stopped the ooze in its tracks and caused the noises and rage of the storm to abate, I did not do enough to banish them entirely. But when I started from the beginning the next time round, Gault’s strong baritone joined me, and our combined voices echoed and rang the length and breadth of the hold. The black ooze retreated.

  “Then it started to fight back. I felt it first in my head, a rushing, tearing, sensation, like a retreating surf tumbling pebbles across a rocky shore. The noise in the hold, where our chant fought against a resurgent roar of a gale, became deafening. The hull began to roll and yaw, port then starboard, then back again, as if the boat itself were now being tossed in that selfsame gale.

  “Gault’s chant faltered. The boat seemed to surge below us, and a fresh roll almost knocked us both from our feet.

  “‘She’s broken her moorings,’ he shouted, struggling to make himself heard above the roar and cacophony that surrounded us. ‘I have to get up top.’

  “If I wanted to stop him, I would need to stop my own chant, and I felt the beast in my head, waiting for the opportunity to pounce. I could not relax, could not prevent Gault as he carefully stepped out of the circle and headed at a run for the stairs.

  “I was left alone in the hold, and the ravening beast was stronger than ever.

  *

  “The black oozed surged across the deck, heading after Gault. I did the only thing I could think of on the spur of the moment that might save him.

  “I stopped chanting.

  “The sea roared and screamed around me.

  “I said its name, softly.

  “‘Oannes.’

  “Whatever designs the black ooze may have had on Gault were forgotten. It surged again, this time coming straight for the defensive circle, moving at speed. Blackness crashed against the outer lines. Valves flared, azure light blazing and throwing capering shadow around the hull. The noise of the gale rose, and rose again.

  “The deck bucked underfoot, sending me to my knees. The lantern that Gault had left at my feet started to slide away from me. I made a grasp for it—too late. It slid over the inner protective line, leaving a clear gap in the defences.

  “The tugging in my head grew severe, and I felt the call of the dance, an almost overpowering desire just to relax, and float, and dream.

  “The black ooze gathered and thickened. The gale rose to an almost unbearable scream as the whole boat tossed and bucked. The ooze surged directly towards the weak spot in the circle.

  “I was out of options. I had only one recourse open to me, one that I was loath to take, for I knew the chances of success were only slim to none. Nevertheless, just as the ooze raised itself up and looked to fall on me from above, I shouted, unsure if I could even bring it to memory.

  “The last line of the Saaamaaa Ritual echoed through the hold.

  “There was a huge crash, and I was thrown down to strike my head, hard, on the deck. My eyesight dimmed, but not before I saw the ooze dissipate, melting into the cracks in the deck. The movement of the boat steadied. I heard Gault call my name, but he was so very far away.

  “I fell
into a dead faint.

  *

  “I awoke some time later with bright warm sun on my face and the taste of rum on my lips. Gault looked down at me, concern writ large on his face.

  “‘You’re back among the living then?’ he said. ‘I knew that beastie was no match for a spot of rum.’

  “He handed me a tumbler full of the spirit, and I was only too happy to knock it back. As it hit my stomach I started to feel more like my old self. I sat up and looked around.

  “It was immediately apparent that we were no longer in Greenwich. The boat sat, in what looked to be an abnormally high tide, berthed at Westminster pier in the shadow of Parliament.

  “Gault saw my puzzlement and grinned.

  “‘I thought we were lost for a time there. ’Tis a shame you were out of things, for you missed a tidal bore the likes of which this old river has never seen. Fifteen feet high and more it must have been, and it carried us up from Greenwich to here as if the winds of hell were pushing us on. There’s heavy flooding up and down the whole length of the river; a terrible mess.’

  “‘And we caused it?’

  “He laughed again.

  “‘I wouldn’t go around making accusations against honest seafaring folks caught up in a natural calamity if I were you,’ he said. ‘Besides, whatever you did, it was quite a success.’

  “He pointed down to the quayside. Four men were manhandling the stone box down the gangway.

  “‘It seems to have lost whatever powers it had. And I will keep my word. You shall have your share, Mr. Carnacki. You more than deserve it.’

  “I left the good captain standing up on his deck. The last I saw of him was as he waved down at me. Then I turned my back and made my slow way home, to bed, and a most welcome sleep.”

  *

  Carnacki sat back in his chair, his tale done.

  “So Gault was right?” Arkright said as we stood to take our leave. “Your risk at the end paid off?”